Tuning In: Sean McDonough busy, but misses Red Sox days

When Sean McDonough called back to be interviewed for this column yesterday, he was in an airport waiting for his delayed flight to depart. No surprise there.

If you’re an ESPN play-by-play announcer, you’re a frequent flyer and the next couple of weeks will be especially busy for McDonough.

He’ll be in Lincoln, Neb., tomorrow to call the Penn State-Nebraska football game, then head to UMass Monday to watch the Minutemen and Harvard practice before calling their 10 a.m. — that’s right, morning — basketball game Tuesday in Amherst. That night, he’ll fly to Chicago to call the Toledo at Northern Illinois football game Wednesday. On Thursday, he’ll fly to Hawaii to prep for his 10th Maui Invitational, and he’ll call six basketball games there the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

While the rest of us are spending Thanksgiving Day with our families, McDonough will be flying from Maui to Columbus, Ohio, because he’ll call the Michigan at Ohio State football game the following Saturday. If his connecting flights work out, he’ll arrive in Columbus late Thanksgiving Day afternoon. He’d settle for that.

After the Maui championship game two years ago, he took a red eye that landed in Phoenix at 7 a.m. Thanksgiving Day. He had a two-hour layover, but his connecting flight to Columbus was delayed 3-1/2 hours so he spent more than five hours in the airport.

“I’m only the person in the airport,” he said. “I’m just wiped out from coming off the red eye and you haven’t really slept and you’ve done a bunch of games in three days and all you want to do is get to Columbus.”

McDonough didn’t arrive at his hotel in Columbus until around 8 that night and his room-service Thanksgiving turkey dinner didn’t improve his mood.

“It looked like cafeteria food,” McDonough said.

Nevertheless, McDonough considers the hectic travel worth it.

“I still love it,” he said. “I feel blessed to be able to do these events. As I travel around, I’m fully cognizant that there are a lot of people out there who are sportscasters or who want to be sportscasters who would kill to do the Maui Invitational or the Ohio State-Michigan game. So if you have to endure some inconveniences along the way, that’s fine by me.”

The Harvard-UMass game at 10 a.m. Tuesday will be one of 11 college basketball games that ESPN will televise live in 24 hours beginning with West Virginia at No. 21 Gonzaga at midnight and concluding with No. 8 Duke against No. 3 Kentucky in Atlanta at 9 p.m.

ESPN will air Davidson at New Mexico at 2 a.m. and Houston Baptist at Hawaii at 4 a.m., but because of time-zone differences, those start times won’t be too absurd for fans in the stands. On the other hand, the Stony Brook at Rider game at 6 a.m. in New Jersey will be, but those schools obviously will do anything to appear on national television.

McDonough, 50, doesn’t know for sure, but he figures there must be some basketball fanatics who watch all 11 games just to say they did it.

“We live in a country of sports-crazed fools,” he said, “and thank God because it’s really what makes ESPN what it is. If people didn’t have rabid interest, there wouldn’t be 24-hour sports networks.”

McDonough and analyst Bill Raftery will watch UMass and Harvard practice Monday, then spend the night in Amherst.

Strange as it may sound, it has been eight years since McDonough worked as the television voice of the Red Sox. He called Sox games from 1988 through their World Series championship season of 2004 before NESN decided not to pick up his contract option.

“I miss it sometimes,” he said, “when I turn it on and they’re playing the Yankees and it’s a big game, but I’ve done a lot of things since then that I never would have done had I stayed.”

In addition to calling a slew of college football and basketball games for ESPN, McDonough has worked the U.S. Open and British Open golf tournaments and has remained involved in baseball by calling Monday night games on ESPN.

McDonough misses the laughs he had with Jerry Remy and producer Russ Kenn, but he still keeps in touch with them.

NESN has hired Leah Hextall as an anchor and reporter.

Hextall, a native of Brandon, Manitoba, had been an anchor and reporter since 2005 for CTV, Canada’s most-watched broadcast network.

Her grandfather, Bryan Hextall Sr., is an NHL Hall of Famer, and cousin Ron Hextall, a former NHL goaltender, is vice president and assistant general manager of the L.A. Kings.

Paul Flannery became the NBA writer for SBNation.com on Nov. 1 after having served as the Celtics writer for WEEI.com for four years.

When he worked for WEEI.com, Flannery often provided his insights on WEEI radio after Celtics games. He said his radio work for the station may continue, but nothing is official yet.